Author Archives: Dave Mathwin

Chesterton Strikes. . .

by Dave Mathwin

[The problem] I mean is [modern] man’s inability to state his opponent’s view, and often his inability even to state his own.  . . . There is everywhere the habit of assuming certain things, in the sense of not even imagining the opposite things.  For instance, as history is taught, nearly everyone always assumes that it was the right side that won in all important past conflicts. . . . Say to him that we should now be better off if Charles Edward and the Jacobites had captured London instead of falling back from Derby, and he will laugh. . . . Yet nothing can be a more sober or solid fact that that, when the issue was still undecided, wise and thoughtful men were to be found on both sides.  . . . I could give many other examples of what I mean by this imaginative bondage.  It is to be found in the strange superstition of making sacred figures out of certain historical characters, who must not be moved from their symbolic attitudes. . . . To a simple rationalist, these prejudices are a little hard to understand.

From G.K. Chesterton’s “The Thing.”

Chesterton, as usual has a wonderful eye-opening point here.  But, as usual, after he blows you away you need to step back and make sure you agree.  The question is, what wars would have been better if the ‘other’ side had won?

Let’s remove the very obvious ones from contention.

Clearly the world might have been better off if, for example, the ‘Whites’ had won the Russian civil war against the ‘Reds.’  On the flip side, the right side won W.W. II.  I’m interested in the more controversial examples.

I do think the right side won W.W. I.

Some would disagree, but I say the right side won the American Civil War.

I say Europe was better off that Napoleon lost.

I realize that it is harder than we might realize to think of many wars that we wish would have gone the other way.

If we take Chesterton’s example, the Stuarts did not have a great track record, and it is hard from my perspective to see that they ‘should’ have won.  But I would love for someone to make a case for it.

Can anyone make a case that Carthage ‘should’ have won the Punic Wars?

Some might argue that the ‘wrong’ side won in the Peloponnesian War.  But in my opinion Athens had descended into self-worship and lost what made them great by that point.

I can offer a few moderately controversial assertions.

I would argue that the world would have been a better place if Phillip lost at Charonea, or if Alexander lost at Issus or Guagemela.

Greek democracy limped badly by Phillip’s time, and may never have returned to greatness.  But Philip snuffed it out completely.  By the time the Romans meet the Greeks, all the Greeks have to show them is absolutism, and this disease seeped into the Roman political consciousness.

Alexander obviously has many admirable qualities, but I don’t like him.  He was a butcher.  His success inspired others like Caesar to kill for glory.  His success romanticized him.  Maybe if he had lived he would have turned sour to those that came after him, but his early death sealed his reputation as the ‘boy conqueror.’  His failure to establish a workable political system led to the splintering and continued disintegration of the Greek world.  Though I would agree that Phillip & Alexander don’t create Greek weakness, they capitalize on it.

Can someone else make a good  and controversial case that another major conflict should have gone a different way?

Henry of Huntingdon and the Nature of Reality

by Dave Mathwin

Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English People:1000-1154 is one of the more entertaining medieval primary sources.  He drops in the occasional good anecdote, casts his narrative in a theological arc, and displays familiarity with Scripture and the Latin classics.

What fascinates me about him, however, are two passages that cannot help but shock the modern reader.

First, his description of the death of King William:

In the year 1100 King William ended his cruel life in a wretched death.  . . .  [while hunting] there Walter Tirel, aiming at a stag, accidentally hit the king with an arrow.  The king was struck in the heart, and fell without uttering a word.  A little earlier blood was seen to bubble up from the ground in Berkshire. . .  (p. 48, Oxford Classics Edition)

And a little later he writes,

In the same way Earl Geoffrey, among the ranks of his own . . . was struck by an arrow from a foot-soldier.  He scoffed at the wound, but after a few days died of this injury, excommunicate.  See how the vengeance of God . . . is made know throughout the ages, and is executed in the same way for the same crime!  While the church of Ramsey was being held as a castle [by the Earl] blood bubbled out of the walls of the church and the adjoining cloister, clearly demonstrating the divine wrath and prophesying the destruction of the wrong-doers.  Many witnessed this, and I myself saw it with my own eyes’ (p. 83, Oxford Classics Edition).

What are we to make of these appearances of blood?

Like Lewis’s famous “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” argument with Christ, we do not have many options open to us.

We cannot say that Henry is a mere gullible simpleton.  As we have already noted, he was a well educated man.

We might say that he simply wrong about the first instance.  He does not claim to have seen it himself, and one could argue that he merely reports the prejudices of local simpletons.  But we would still have the second example to deal with.

We can argue that he was lying in the second example.  But this event occurred within his lifetime and many would have witnessed it.  If he was lying he opened himself up to be contradicted quite easily.  Of course, he could still have lied.

Maybe he didn’t see blood at the church, but something that looked like it.  But everyone knows what blood looks like, especially soldiers.

So what would it mean if he accurately reported the truth?

1. It might have been a direct miracle from God.  This could be a valid interpretation of the second incident.  But the casual, offhand mention of blood in the first example make me doubt this.

2. It could have been the ‘expected’ way God works to reveal Himself in creation.  Perhaps this would put what happened at something slightly less than ‘miracle’ level intervention, but above ‘every day providence.’  This could be an interpretation of Henry’s words in the second instance, and explain the seeming nonchalance of the first.

The problem with this is that most of us would not expect this today.  Has anyone witnessed such a thing?  I’m guessing that if we saw it we would be more likely to call it a ‘miracle’ if we saw it today.  If we accept option #2 does it imply that God changes the way He reveals Himself over time?

3. Or, might it be that creation was built in some way to respond to sin in this way?  In other words, in different periods of time or different places is the human connection to creation closer, more ‘symbiotic?’  Has the West’s self-imposed distance from creation over the last few centuries meant that this would/could not happen anymore, at least in the developed world?

4. Owen Barfield seemed to suggest in Saving the Appearances that reality can be shaped in part by our perception of it.  Unfortunately, I could understand very little of his argument in that book.

Has anyone else read it?

While this sounds strange, C.S. Lewis hints at this view (Barfield was a good friend) in Ransom’s talk with Merlin in That Hideous Strength, where Merlin harkens back to a time when Nature could respond against evil, or perhaps even be manipulated by those with a special relationship to it.

This, in turn, might shed light on the heretofore puzzling comment in Mark’s gospel (6:5) that Jesus could  do no miracles because of their lack of faith.  Maybe our relationship to reality is one that flows in many directions.  Since we no longer believe such things to be possible, they no longer happen.  But if we did believe. . . ?

This last view might change our view of the past in a variety of ways.  Egyptian folklore, for example, is riddled with tales of magic and magicians with unusual powers.  Should we see more historical truth in them then we have so far?

As you can probably tell, I tend to prefer one of the last two options, but I have no real strong feelings.  I would love to hear other possibilities or insights.

12th Grade: Platea, Taiwan, and SOPA

by Dave Mathwin

This week we continued our look at the Peloponnesian War and looked at a few important topics:

1. Athens and Platea,

Platea had been a long time ally of Athens, and a strategically important one because of its geographical location near Spartan allies.  Platea’s position was much like that of West Berlin in the Cold War, and perhaps, Taiwan today.  When they came under attack, Athens faced a brutal decision of either abandoning them or attempting a very risky attempt at reinforcing them.  Of course this is shortly after their city suffered an attack of the plague that killed perhaps 1/3 of its citizens.  What should they do?  The class was divided on this question, and it resulted in some interesting debate.  Would/should we, for example, be willing to defend Taiwan at any costs if China attacked?

2. The Athenian Assembly

Thucydides gives us a great behind the scenes look at Athenian democracy in action.  Here we see something much different than we are used to from Congress.  They discussed real issues in plain language with arguments that people could follow.  No 800 page laws passed here.  Average, everyday people could have a direct impact who were not even elected officials, like Cleon, the son of a tanner.  Anyone who has watched congressional sessions on C-Span and found themselves less than inspired would, I think, find accounts of the Athenian assembly bracing.

But there was a down side, as sometimes this rough and tumble process found itself outside established law.  The first time this happened, they approved of a military action that resulted in their biggest success of the early part of the war.  Years later, when they did something similar after the Battle of Arginusae, it would be a disaster.

Is it possible to have our cake and eat it with democracy?  Must we choose between an emphasis on law, with its attendant stuffiness, and dynamic social interaction, with it’s propensity to get carried away?  If so, which should we choose?  Is it possible for our country and our system of government to have the latter even if we wanted to?

3. The War Expands

When the Peloponnesian War began in 431 BC, I think it safe to say that both major proponents felt the war would be over in a year.  After all, no major strategic question divided them (or so, perhaps, it merely appeared to be so). Why was the early phase of the war indecisive?  How did this lead to a change of tactics for both sides, and how did this end up changing the war itself?

On Wednesday we took a detour and discussed the SOPA law being debated before Congress.  I thought this was worthwhile not just because it was a hot topic of conversation, but because it has a lot to do with how one thinks of democracy and society properly functioning.

The law raises a couple of key questions:

– Most see the internet as a good thing for democracy.  Witness, for example, the role of cell phones, web broadcasts, and other such things during the Arab Spring.  The internet puts enormous amount of choices before consumers, which can translate into an enormous amount of power.  The relative ease with which the public can pirate media forces media conglomerates to not take the consumer for granted.  Many have written, for example, of the entrenched arrogance and aloofness of the record companies ca. 1995.  CD”s made them huge profits, and they reduced customer choice.  After all, what other choice did we have but to go to them and buy whole albums? Such is the usual attitude of dictatorships before the fall.

– On the other hand, the digitizing of information has allowed those with power (be they governments or corporations) to amass enormous amounts of data about us.  The data is easy to acquire, store, and retrieve. Privacy has been redefined by the very existence of such technology.  As we have said in class before, the only thing preventing our military from taking over the government is whether they want to or not.  Even citizens with all the automatic weapons the NRA would want available would be no match for an air force, laser guided bombs, etc. In the same way, the only thing preventing government’s from accessing and using this information is whether they want to or not.

On another note,

I noticed during our conversation that the democratization of information may have led to a democratization of Constitutional interpretation.  One student objected to the law because, “It makes the companies instead of the individual the arbiter of what is or is not copyright infringement.”  This student said this almost without realizing the revolutionary implications of such a thought.  For myself, the idea that individuals decide what infringes copyright is a radically new idea.  For the student, it seemed perfectly obvious.

Of course the proposed law does ultimately involve the courts.  Media companies can’t put anyone in jail.  But it struck me that ‘Government’ as the deciding entity rarely came up in the discussion.  This may reflect something Philip Bobbitt discussed regarding the ‘Market State’ back in our mid-term project unit.  He predicted that in the ‘Internet’ era government’s would grow weaker in their connection to the people.  We just don’t need the centralization governments give society anymore.

All in all, it was a wonderful rabbit trail, and one we will likely revisit in a week or so when we see if the law passes.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

A Word on Methodology and the Purpose of History

by Dave Mathwin

On the first day of school in 8th grade Ancient History (which is the first time I will have taught any of the students in that class), I begin class with the premise that I am wasting their time.

History, after all, (I argue) has no real bearing on your life.  We study some names and dates from the past, a few battles here and there.  Sometimes it might have entertainment value but will never really impact you in any way.  Whatever Cyrus the Great did, be it good or bad, won’t impact on you today.  The past has no present.

Depending on their personality and previous experience students either get very excited or troubled by the prospect that we can blow off the year.  Yes, eventually we get around to reasons why hopefully I will not waste their time, but we should not sweep the arguments against History under the rug too quickly.  Before we bother with History in the first place, we should know what we are doing and why.

Some students respond by stating that history offers us lessons.  When people do bad things, we can learn to avoid them, when they do good we can emulate them.

This is a very common answer, with some truth in it, but I refuse the premise on which it’s based.  Reducing history to didactic lessons runs akin to telling people that Christianity is about adhering to a superior morality.  Whatever truth lies in that statement, Christianity really is not about “morality” at all, or at least, the moral component makes no sense without a much larger context.

In the same way, History does not begin and end with proverbs and moral lessons.  It should be about encounter.  It should be about transformation.

History is often and easily abused.  One common form of abuse is using History as a vehicle for proving a pet theory, something all of us can be guilty of at times. Such an approach is both dangerous and uncharitable.  Uncharitable, because History has no room to speak for itself when we insist it conform to us.  We stop listening and lose the possibility of empathy and understanding.  Dangerous, because manipulating the past puts us in a position of great power.  We erect a wall between ourselves (the “good,” or those with knowledge and understanding) and others, those who “should know better.”  If we do this, we cannot learn, cannot be challenged, and cannot grow.

Finitude will always limit our experience, but we need confronted with “the other” to get shaken out of our narrow field of vision.  Historians can often make the mistake of viewing the past in terms of the present, but this robs the power of the past to really do its work.  Seeing through different eyes pushes us beyond ourselves.  In writing about great books, C.S. Lewis said,

. . . in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

This is how History (like all our endeavors) should prepare us for the Beatific Vision.  The “otherness” of different cultures and people can by grace train our hearts for the “otherness” of God’s Kingdom.  Other times and places should also make us humble and charitable.  Hindsight is a great luxury, but we must avoid “finger-wagging.”  We must honor the past by viewing it as they saw it, not as we see it now.  We too act in a fallen context without omniscience.  Those in the past lived under the same constraints.  What kind of decisions would we make in their place?

Bringing it to the present, how do we act morally and justly with the information we have?  How do we make decisions in a fallen world?   We must take responsibility for these decisions, and the difficulties we face should make us rely on God’s grace and wisdom.  Our own sin should make us slow to judge those in the past that struggled with many of the same things as ourselves.  Are we so sure that we would do better?  When we, with proper conviction, call out the past for its mistakes we likely will need the humility to call ourselves and our own society to account.

I am not interested so much in changing the opinion of any student about, say, Napoleon or the Industrial Revolution.  But I am very much interested in 1) Each student coming to a greater understanding of their view of the world, and the extent to which that view can be supported by Christian belief, ethics, etc., and 2) Each student more fully understanding the implications of their decisions in the short and long term for themselves and others.

Mark Twain once said that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  As we see connections and patterns, we learn more about humanity.  But humanity does not exist in a vacuum.  As in all disciplines, the study of History involves an attempt to understand Reality, imbued with God’s presence.  As Francis Schaeffer said, “He is there and He is not Silent.”

About the Title of This Site

by Dave Mathwin

‘A Stick in the Mud’ pays homage to the late great Kenneth Clark, who won international acclaim for his ‘Civilisation’ series in 1969.

To be sure, Clark has his detractors.

Against him, one might say that,

  1. He is a mildly stuffy British lord
  2. He has bad teeth
  3. Niall Ferguson (another favorite of mine) took a shot at Clark in his latest work, “Civilization: The West and the Rest.”  Ferguson argued that civilization isn’t about pictures and sculpture so much as it is about roads, banking systems, and stable governance.

Would Clark have disagreed?

I think so.  All decent civilizations have roads, financial systems, and so on.  Their differences in these areas would be quite instructive though I suspect we would find more similarity. The variety of artistic styles, however, shines immediate and obvious light into the values of any creative people.  After all, one might make a banking system as a mere slipshod afterthought.  No one would do this with a sculpture.

I heartily encourage you to try out Clark on your students.  Those who do will be delighted by his insight and careful eye.  Yes, your students may groan at the prospect.  When they do that with me I tell them, “You protest too much.  You are only groaning to cover up your real love for Clark, and to maintain some semblance of cool in the eyes of your classmates.  It’s alright, I’ve been there too.”

They usually do not groan after that.

Enjoy!

8th Grade: The First Clash of East and West?

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we had our debate on the forms of government, and wrapped up Persian civilization.  We will have a test on Persia this coming Wednesday before we start to review for our mid-terms.

We looked at Persia’s expansion in Europe this week as they crossed the Hellespont into Greece.  Why did they do this?  I think there are a variety of possibilities.

1. We have talked before about the ‘Burden of Cyrus.’  His extraordinary accomplishments made Persia a world power.  However, this legacy could be a burden as well as a gift.  Both with Cambyses and Darius we see this ‘need’ to do something grand that Cyrus did not do, something that would allow them to leave their own mark on Persia.  For Cambyses, this took the form of the conquest of Egypt.  For Darius one could argue, it took the form of conquering Greece.

2. The answer could be simpler.  Expansion may erase current enemies but it usually creates new ones.  The Aegean Sea may simply have been the ‘next’ enemy for Persia given their previous expansion.

3. Herodotus records a few stories that suggest that Darius may have had personal motivations for conquering Greece.  The stories may or may not be true, but they might have a ring of truth.  It is not unknown for kings or country’s to act with this kind of motivation.

We wanted to realize, however, that expansion across the Aegean would be a different kind of expansion than the Persians were used to.  Almost the entirety of their empire was land based.  Anyone can walk.  Not everyone can sail.  Their expansion overseas would mean the creation of a whole wing of their empire.  Embarking on the sea would put them in a position where they would need a strong presence but have little experience.  In contrast, most Greek city-states grew up on the water.  Persia would still be able to muster an overwhelming advantage in raw manpower.  For most city-states this would be enough.  But as we shall see, not for all.

We looked at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., and what it revealed about Persia.  Persia’s defeat at Marathon hardly spelled doom for Persia, but it did demonstrate their weaknesses, and perhaps, the fact that they had finally stretched out their imperial arm too far.

Persia was, in general, less oppressive and more tolerant than previous empires.  They provided economic advantage and security.  But being part of Persia did not come with any sort of identity.  One might argue that Persia was all head, but no heart, and on some level people need inspired.  They possessed huge armies, but the majority of those armies had conquered troops that probably felt little reason to fight for Persia.  Thankfully for Persia, most of the time their huge numbers meant that they often did not have to fight at all.  In fact, Persia’s absolute requirement for military service for all eligible males shows them at their least tolerant.  When one father asked King Xerxes to exempt his youngest son to stay on the family farm, Xerxes executed his son, hacked his body in two, and had his departing forces march between the pieces of his son’s body as they left the city.  They allowed for no exception to their ‘No Exceptions’ policy.

At Marathon, the Athenians gained a tactical advantage by focusing their attack on the non-Persian members of Persia’s force.  The Persian force collapsed quickly as large portions of their force beat a hasty retreat.  They may have been willing to follow orders and march where told.  Why would they risk more than that?  What were they fighting for?  On a variety of occasions, Herodotus speaks of the bravery and skill of the purely Persian troops. But the conquered and incorporated troops proved to be a hindrance rather than an asset.  But I also think that the Athenian victory was part psychological.  They ran at the Persians — they actually attacked!  Herodotus hints at the shock the Persians must have felt under such a circumstance.  In Greece, Persia would meet a people who refused to accept their traditional ‘deal.’  The fact that Persia needed to build a navy to deal with this threat put them in an unusual position, like fish out of water.  We will see in a few months how and why the Greeks defeated Persia in a battle of East v. West.

Many thanks

Dave

12th Grade: The Dynamic of the ‘State Nation’

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we continued looking at the development of states, attempting to make the connection between the various elements in society that propel change.  We looked this week at the ‘State-Nation,’ and the ‘Nation-State.’

Th ‘Territorial-State’ (1648-1776) was a conscious move away from the monarchical ambition and religious motivated violence of the previous era.  They sought order, symmetry, balance, and proportion.  This required careful international diplomacy, and sought to prevent any inward social upheavals, for good or ill.

A variety of factors lead to the breakup of this constitutional order.  For one, the Enlightenment grew stale and begged for a more ‘Romantic’ counter-reaction.  But perhaps more than that, the expansion of Territorial States stretched the logic of their identity based on contiguous property (and not ideology, which travels in the minds of me).  The French-Indian War is perhaps the most striking example of a Territorial-State conflict that gives birth to the ‘State-Nation’ here in America.

The French-Indian War created a sense of identity, a sense of a ‘people.’   This ‘people’ would naturally now not want to be treated as pawns in an international game.  They would inevitably demand rights, and this is at least part of the roots of the conflict between the colonies and England.

A look at the Declaration of Independence and Constitution gives us insight into the emerging world of ‘State-Nations.’
1. We have the basis of the particular relationship between government and the people rooted in universal ideas (all men are created equal)
2. We have recognition that the ‘people,’ not territory or states, are the basis for political power, i.e. “We the people. .  .”
3. At the same time we still have a somewhat aristocratic, paternalistic attitude towards ‘the people.’  Government was responsible ‘for’ the people, but neither George Washington, John Adams, Robespierre, or Napoleon would have thought in terms of government ‘by’ the people, or ‘of’ the people.

Napoleon is a great example of someone who understood how the socio-political landscape had changed, and understood how to take advantage of it.  The French Revolution destroyed not only the aristocracy, but the professional army led by aristocrats.  Napoleon had mass, energy, and ideology at his disposal, but lacked the well drilled and trained armies of the rest of Europe.

With a ‘people’ now organized in France, Napoleon could mobilize more support for his campaigns.  He had the supplies, backing, and motive to take his army far (we are liberators of the oppressed).  His took this energy and channeled, achieving superiority of mass at points of his choosing.  This rag-tag ball of energy created by the French Revolution and harnessed by Napoleon made quick work of the rational, balanced, symmetrical, and aristocratic armies of Europe.

But then a curious thing happened.  The countries Napoleon occupied inevitably brought with them the ideology and ‘constitution’ they espoused.  If France was so great, why couldn’t Prussia or Austria be great too?  If they wanted to resist, they would need to raise a new army rooted in this new sense of solidarity, this new sense of a ‘people.’  The old aristocratic officers had been discredited by their initial defeat at Napoleon’s hands.  The armies that defeated Napoleon from 1809-1815 from Spain to Russia, from Prussia to England, were in sense, Napoleon’s accidental creations.  is it any wonder that

Napoleon’s success and ultimate failure have many lessons.  For our purposes I want the students to see how elements of society fit together and in a sense, carry the same message.  Different ideas and actions create new social and political contexts.  Without awareness of the ripple effects of these changes, nations will end up behind the 8 ball, much like Spain of the early 17th century, France and England in the late 18th century, the Austro-Hungarians in the early 20th century, and so on.

Next week I will update you on the ‘Nation-State’ (what you and I grew up with) passed away, and speculate on the best way to move forward in the new economic, technological, social, cultural, political, and moral world we live in. Having seen a few examples of how this process tends to work, I am hoping for some good observations and discussion from the students.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

11th Grade: The Bible, the Constitution and Slavery

by Dave Mathwin

This was in response to a parent question about the Constitution and slavery.  A difficult and debated question to be sure.  What follows is my two cents, but I would be curious for anyone else’s thoughts. . . 

As to why the Constitution did not forbid slavery, my guess is that:

– The disagreement on slavery could not be solved either at the time of the Declaration (Jefferson’s original draft had an anti-slavery section in it) or the Constitution because it was too much a part of enough of the states at the time.  It had become a part of everyday life.  Slavery was considered to be worth having to get (at least in their minds) the greater good of unity.  If you look at the Convention debates, there is some doubt whether or not states like South Carolina would have signed onto the Constitution if it banned slavery.  Whether they were right about the ultimate benefits of that trade-off . . . I’m not sure.  But personally it would seem to me that history says ‘no.’  We don’t know what would have happened had the anti-slavery faction left some states out of the Union.  But it’s hard to imagine it being worse than a Civil War that claimed 600,000 lives and divided the country for another 100 year afterwards, with segregation, etc.

Of course one could argue that there was nothing in the Constitution that made the continuation and expansion of slavery inevitable, and I would agree.  But the Constitution did not really provide a physical or moral framework for deciding this question either, aside from the difficult amendment process.  The southern states only accepted the 13th-14th Amendments when they were totally broken and had no recourse to object.

– I also think that many believed that, while slavery was bad, it should go away of its own accord rather than government action.  This has a lot to do with many people’s view of ‘liberty’ at that time.  “I don’t like what you’re doing, but I suppose it’s not my business,” etc.  It might be similar to someone today on the abortion question.  “I don’t approve of abortion, but I don’t think government should be telling people what to do with their bodies, their families, etc.  Those are private, not public matters.”

As to the Bible and slavery, this too is a tough, slippery question.  I tend to think that while the Bible does not speak directly against it, the entire tenor and ‘atmosphere’ of the New Testament speaks against it indirectly.  This is in part why when the Christian Middle Ages come, slavery disappears almost entirely for the first time in human history.  When the Church begins to falter badly in the Renaissance, slavery returns.  Though I realize there were other factors, such as exploration, for one.

The concept of free individuals is also relatively new.  Aristotle, for example, was a progressive thinker in many ways.  But he defended certain kinds of slavery because he believed some were nothing more than slaves by nature.  Though some slave owners claimed him as an authority, they should have been more careful.  Aristotle did not think anyone should be a slave by race, or merely because they were captured in war.

What do you think?

12th Grade: The French-Algerian War

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings to all,

This week we examined one of the more studied insurgency campaigns, Algeria’s ultimately successful bid to get independence from France from 1954-1962.  I wanted to focus on a few main issues, aided by our watching of ‘The Battle of Algiers.’

1. Why did France feel the absolute need to win in Algeria?

From the time of Charlemagne (or perhaps even dating back to the pre-Romanized Gauls) France was regarded as having the world’s pre-eminent military, from the Crusades, to Joan of Arc, to Napoleon.  In W.W. I they fought heroically and with great determination.  In 1940, however, they suffered a humiliating and shockingly quick defeat to the Nazi’s.  Desperately seeking to regain their pre-war glory, they did not give up their colonies (unlike their friendly rival England).  They lost again in humiliating fashion in 1954 in Southeast Asia — but they would not lose in Algeria.  This was where they would prove to the world that France was still France after all.

How might this psychological and cultural attitude have impacted their strategy and tactics against the insurgency, and was this beneficial?

2. What is the battleground in an insurgent campaign?

It seems clear that the French thought that the battle was against the insurgents primarily, and so put their military foot forward almost exclusively.  Why did this fail?  What is the primary battleground in an insurgent campaign?  Is it the people, or is it an idea?  If so, what role can the military play?  What role does the government and people play?  In our discussion, one student suggested that the only way France could have saved its position in Algeria was through lots of apologies for their poor treatment of them, and lots of financial and social programs to rectify the situation.   In other words, was the problem a military one at all?

Well, it certainly might have been.  But there is a difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics.’  In large measure,* France’s problem was that their use of the military was their strategy.  It was not used as a ‘tactic’ in a broader campaign.

3. What happens when an army fights in disconnected way from its country’s values?

There is a great deal of evidence that French troops tortured and killed some prisoners as a matter of policy.  This was done with the tacit approval of French politicians, but not the French people.  As revelations of the torture emerged, the French public began to turn against the war, feeling betrayed by the army.  The army in turn felt betrayed by the people.  This tension between identity and actions needed resolution in some way — and the result was one successful military coup that put De Gaulle in as president, and another coup attempt that failed to get De Gaulle out of power a few years later.

Why are cultural and political values an important ‘weapon’ in a war?  Under what circumstances can we depart from those values?  How is a country’s identity a part of its strategy in conflict?

4. Related to #3, what should the role of the press be in a free society?

We discussed a few different options related to this question.

– The press should be an entirely objective entity, focused on presenting ‘just the facts.’  But, however much of an ideal this is, it is rarely, if ever attained.

– The press should be an implicit supporter of the government, or the majority.  This does not mean ignoring obvious truths, but it would mean using the press as a means to ‘rally the people.’

or

– The press should be oriented ‘against’ the government.  That is, the press’ main function is to provide an alternate viewpoint apart from the government’s message.  The government gets its chance, the press provides the people with ‘the other side of the story.’

Students took a variety of positions and tried to combine some of them as well.  We agreed that the current situation is both better and worse than it was 20 years ago.  Better in that we have many different options readily available to us, worse in that it can be challenging to sift through the competing perspectives and narratives.

Next week we will look at our current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also begin to prepare for our own ‘insurgency.’

Sincerely,

Dave Mathwin

*France did attempt some small scale political reforms, but almost everyone viewed it as ‘too little, too late.’